Top 5 Customer Experience (CX) Predictions for 2020

Email address:

Connect with Author

Sonali brings 8 years of writing and editing experience to MTA. She aims to create, and curate content based on in-depth research, industry insights and the need to tell compelling brand stories that engage readers. In her career, she has worked on multiple content related projects around marketing, sales, social media, corporate communications, digital, events, internal communications, process documents, SEO, advertising etc. A post-grad in marketing communications, Sonali considers herself a learner – with a dream of writing a novel someday.

The customer-centric organizations of today are already keenly aware of the digital revolution, which has transformed conventional business models while empowering customers. Over the last decade, customer experience (CX) has drastically changed with the introduction of several opportunities for customers to interact, engage and transact with brands at their convenience across multiple channels.

Digital 2.0 is the next phase, where the plain and simple customer experience of old will make space for intuitive, contextual and practical engagement across different customer touchpoints. By 2020, digital technologies like AI, biometrics, machine and deep learning and robotic automation will revolutionize the way consumers interact with organizations and brands.

Let’s look at 5 ways CX will shape up leading up to 2020

1. IOT will Exponentially Enhance CX

According to Gartner, 2020 is going to witness 20 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet. These include general purpose devices like phones, watches, and PCs as well as objects like vending machines, connected cars, jet engines, TVs, etc. As customers become more open to interact with all these internet-connected devices and machines, it gives marketers a huge opportunity for in-moment marketing.

Marketers can utilize the insights extracted from big data analysis of all those connected devices to offer real-time, relevant and valuable propositions. IoT will assist marketers to create customized offerings by combining creativity, logic and data, and sync that with customer needs and brand goals.

2. AI and Intelligent Assistants will Augment Customer Interactions

‘85% of consumer interactions will be non-human by 2020,’ declares Gartner. AI-powered intelligent assistants with automated and self-learning platforms will play a major role in enhancing the customer experience. Chatbots and virtual agents are capable of creating personalized and contextual customer engagement while saving time and effort for live agents and increasing their productivity.

EmoBots – the next big thing in this space is going to enhance CX by gauging the real-time emotional reactions of a customer and ensuring apt support during the entire contextual conversation. 2020 will also see extensive commercialization of personal AI assistants like Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana. They will go well beyond answering simple questions and following easy orders.

3. Engagement Will Be Driven by Immersive Technologies

In CX 2020, organizations will need to foster an overall culture of ‘design thinking’ and harness technologies that enable capabilities of experience-led, proactive and zero-UI-driven solutions like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). AR and VR technologies are ideal technologies with which to create immersive customer experiences. They are going to dominate customer engagement in 2020 by creating an ‘other-worldly’ experience in which customers can almost touch, feel, hear and examine products along with their features. When innovations in animation using sound, video and graphics, are combined with technologies like mobile devices, IoT, 3-D visuals, M2M, sensors, and VR/AR headsets – CX will be elevated to a whole new level of magical realism.

4.Hyper-Personalization Will Play a Key Role in Redefining CX

Going towards 2020, businesses must adopt dynamic and strategic personalization techniques and approaches driven by breakthrough technologies like AI, predictive analytics, IoT, geolocation, etc. A singular and unified view of the customer and his entire journey across touchpoints and brand interactions is a must to create hyper-customized messages and interactions. Equally important is a robust technology architecture powered by elements like Data Management Platforms (DMP), Marketing Automation Platforms, Web Personalization, Recommender Platforms and Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) Platforms. Marketers might even witness a scenario where evolving technologies and consumer demand will create a requirement for individualized products and services.

5. CX Will Have to Factor-In Instant gratification

Today’s CX environment is largely driven by immediate actions: a fast feedback loop and instant gratification in the form of laser-fast delivery, reply to a query or question, discounts and offers served during transactions, along with robust buyer rewards. Keeping this trend in mind, retail giants like Amazon and Walmart are already adopting and investing in disruptive technologies that aim to save customers’ time, effort and money with quick responses and actions. Some examples of meeting a customer’s requirements as fast as possible are same-day delivery and pickups, expedited shipping, chatbots, the sharing economy, self-service systems and expedited-delivery through drones. Companies are also embracing ideas like fast ‘no-questions-asked’ refunds to further heighten CX. The speed of execution could be a powerful differentiator for brands going forward.

In Conclusion

The dynamic nature of CX will be understood best by companies who adopt a culture of ‘convergence’. All the organization’s systems, assets and resources (human and non-human) including customer engagement processes, customer data sources, teams and departments, connected devices and company intelligence (information across these connected systems) should be brought under one unified ecosystem. This will enable CMOs, CMTs and Marketing Heads to better understand their customers and offer intelligent personalization in CX – delivered super-fast.